


let us hope that the duct tape holds

by bestliars



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Magic, Minnesota Wild, eco-punk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 15:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8993281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/pseuds/bestliars
Summary: In 2098 there is a proposition to call the old forces back into the world. In 2210, Charlie is drafted into the league.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pantsoffdanceoff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantsoffdanceoff/gifts).



> thanks to the lovely beta-sweetheart.
> 
> This was really inspired by the book Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn Addicts, by Leigh Phillips. That's kind of a weird thing to say, but true. Great book, you should read it.
> 
> The title is from the song "Space Exploration to Solve Earthly Crises" by The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die.

In 2098 there is a proposition to call the old forces back into the world. In the face of rising seas and rising temperatures there is not time for a scientific solution. Drastic measures must be taken. It is time to turn to magic, which had grown weak, neglected since the age of steam and reason. 

It is not as easy as propping open a door. It is not as easy asking nicely. Bringing magic back into the world will be a monumental task. It will require sacrifice. It will require, blood, sweat, tears, and more blood. It must be a public undertaking of a scale not seen since the second nü deal of 2022. 

While scientists continue to search for a planetary cure, a new league is created to take a more holistic approach. It’s led by true believers, the self proclaimed wizards, rogue futurists, and practitioners of alternative medicine. The operation they dream up is vast, with thirty different initial approaches, reaching in all directions in the hope that something works. To do all that, they need more people than just the true believers. Internationally the strategically correct politicians are persuaded paid off, and the draft is instituted to pick young people and place them on the path towards something bigger. 

In 2210, Charlie is drafted into the league, into a division searching the depths of the ocean for forgotten monsters. He defers for a year to go to school. The following summer his rights are traded to a force attempting to bring back true wild magic. Charlie goes back to school that fall, but university doesn’t agree with him. Classes are hard and boring, and the idea of calling down untamable forces starts to look much more appealing. 

After winter break he reports to the mandatory general training. His experience there involves cutting his hair into a mohawk and making out with a boy who later becomes the first man to successfully change into a cat and back into a human being instead of living the rest of his life as feline. It is an interesting few months to be sure, but he wouldn't say any of it prepared him for the wilderness ahead. 

He's twenty years old when he flies from Boston to the Twin Cities. He gets his bag from the carousel, and goes to wait under the awning as instructed. There’s a crowd of them, nervous new recruits waiting for someone to tell them what’s next. They make awkward introductions, small talk about what their lives used to be, information that won’t matter soon.

Charlie’s good enough at this sort of shit, but there’s one boy who’s better at it than all the rest. His name is Jason Zucker, and he’s from Vegas, and he’s got a hell of a smile. Even in this moment of anxious uncertainty he can make jokes, try to get everyone to laugh, for a second at least, at the sheer ridiculousness of what’s happening to them if nothing else. He even makes the Swedish kid say four whole words in a row, trying to make the time go by.

When their ride does show up, it’s nothing like Charlie imagined. He’s seen pictures of the division’s leader before, a serious looking Nordic man with steely blue eyes. Charlie didn’t know if their arrival merited the director’s arrival, but he figured it would be someone senior, someone official looking.

Instead it’s a just a guy, a couple of years older than him, with a very precise haircut, driving a heavily modified van. The vehicle looks older than any of them, and there’s a heavy metal scene of a wolf in a forest painted on the side.

That’s Marco, who explains, "I'm not great at the welcoming shit, but I'm not too scary, and I like the drive, so I’m who you get."

Their bags get thrown in the back, and they all pile into the van. The machine rumbles around them. 

"Where are we going?" Zucker asks, as they get out of the labyrinth of the airport and onto the highway.

Marco says one word: "North."

North, and nothing else — that’s all Charlie knows about his future. They’re headed north, and when they get there, his new life will begin.

The city congestion gives over to suburban sprawl, to farmlands, north and north they go. Charlie falls asleep leaning against the window. When he wakes up it’s dark, and the only thing he sees out the window is trees and more trees.

They stop for the night in some town Charlie's never heard of. Grand Marais. "It means big marsh," Marco tells before switching to French to carry on a one sided conversation. 

Charlie looks out at the big lake across the highway from their motel. Nearly black water meeting black sky, going on forever. Zucker's turning restlessly in the other bed, and Charlie knows he should try to sleep too, but it's hard with all that darkness just outside. He can't imagine it will get any less dark from here. 

The great middle-mid-north. They drive for a while longer in the morning, leaving the curve of the lakeshore, the highway carving into the forest. More miles on back roads blacktop before they turn down a gravel driveway. It twists and turns for twenty minutes, taking them farther and farther off the beaten path. Charlie drifts. Watches the trees go by, all the green blurring together until it gets to be too much and he closes his eyes.

He’s startled awake by a car door slamming. They’ve arrived. 

Marco pets the dashboard of the car before they get out, and then pats the front hood. They all pile out of the van, load their bags out of the back.

"Is this it?" One of the others asks. It doesn't look like much, just a cluttered garage, though there could be more underground? Charlie is already beginning to realize he needs to think outside the box if he’s going to keep up.

“We walk from here,” Marco says, and nothing else. They all set off on a narrow path, carrying their bags, trying not to trip over each other.

Charlie later learns that they are being led the long way around the lake. If they had gone right from the garage instead of left it would have been five minutes to their destination, which is tucked just around the hill. But Marco’s taking them the long way around, as is tradition.

It’s a long two hour trek on a hot day. It feels like they’re walking in a circle. Eventually finding out they were walking in a circle is actually very reassuring. Marco isn’t saying how much further there is to go, and no one else is saying much. Zuck tries to fill the silence, but it doesn’t work very well. The birds make more noise than anyone else.

They round a corner, and there’s a short man sitting on a rock. He waves, and stands up as they get closer.

“I still think this is mean,” he says, when they’re within earshot.

“We suffered through it, so can they,” Marco laughs. “Spurg, meet the rookies. Rookies, this is Spurg. He’s older than he looks, and not actually your dad, but he might forget that.”

Spurg explains about how they’ve been led the long way around the lake, and promises dinner will be waiting for them. There’s going to be corn on the cob, it’s supposed to be a real treat. Walking in through the woods it felt scary for a minute, but now Charlie isn’t so worried.

When they get there, it isn’t much. Half a dozen buildings scattered through the trees. It gets called the basecamp, or the village, depending on how professional anyone’s pretending to be. Mostly it’s just the village. There isn’t much call to stand on ceremony, except for their own, a web of rituals that have accrued. 

That night they sleep in the dormitory, a big room in the basement of the main lodge that has enough beds to accommodate the entire population. It’s a dark space, rarely used, sitting in reserve for a certain kind of catastrophe. It’s been recently dusted, haphazardly at best. 

They’ll get their own spaces eventually, but for now it’s dormitory living. There’s enough room to spread out, and they do, to a degree. Somehow Charlie winds up in a bunk in the middle of the room, with Jason on the bed above him. An animal howls in the distance. Someone is snoring. This is nothing like Boston, nothing like home. 

 

*

 

Four years pass. It all becomes normal, or at least normal enough. It becomes mundane. 

They hunt, they gather. They try to talk to gods who talk to lightning. They try to make it rain. They try to make it snow. They try to make the fire burn brighter. They get bored of that experiment, and make s’mores instead, with stale graham crackers and hard marshmallows. It’s the best thing Charlie tastes all year.

They stayed in the dorms their whole first winter, adjusting to the rhythms of life in the village. Morning chores, looking after the cows and chickens, shoveling the paths between the different houses. 

Not everyone stays with their program. Bulmer washes out, Larsen gets sent to another operation. The rest of them stuck around, got comfortable. Everyone who lasted through moved out of the main building, into one of the smaller cabins after spending the spring fixing it up. He shares a room with Zuck. There’s an invisible line down the middle, dividing his mess form Zuck’s precise order, but on cold nights they share a bed. They get an awful lot of cold nights, and it helps to have a warm body curled next to him under the covers. Zuck’s just the right amount of smaller to fit tucked against his shoulder.

It’s all more domestic than Charlie imagined. There’s affection, and home cooked meals. He didn’t expect there to be kids around. He knows that older researchers settle down, get married, have families. This life might be something they’re drafted into, but a lot of folks stick around. The draft picks people for a reason, and doesn’t miss too often. It doesn’t want to take people who aren’t suited for this life. Charlie never imagined being a part of this world growing up, but he doesn’t have a clue what he’d be doing if he hadn’t been chosen. Maybe he’d be a teacher or something, he likes helping out with the kids.

There are days that seem perfectly plain. He does laundry, and helps make six pans of lasagna, and teases Granny about his hair. It isn’t too different from college, from ordinary life.

But then there are the wolves, who aren’t quite wolves, who howl at the fool moon and come close to the humans. There the wolf with a scar over her eye, who likes to sleep by Mikko’s feet in front of the fire. There’s the way Jonas has conversations with the wolves, laughing with them. He breaks into giggles, then tries to translate their jokes for everyone else. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s worrying. 

They are trying to reach dark things. Late at night, after all the kids are safe in bed, there are other sorts of fires. There are herbs and rituals, reconstructed from old legends, reimagined with new idols. They do things that send shivers up Charlie’s spine, that keep him up at night, worrying over whether it’s all going to far.

In the summer they swim in the clear cold water. They canoe. Charlie goes out alone with Jason, the two of them on their own for a couple of weeks, relishing in the relative privacy. It’s just Zuck, not the whole crew. They get filthy portaging through the mud, and ineffectively wash off in the lake. They have sex in a tent, which seemed ridiculous the first time, but by now Charlie likes it.

They have to be careful to not let any mosquitos in, that’s very important. Then they can get naked, revealing sweaty sunburnt skin. They’re naked in front of each other often enough, but it seems different in a tent. The walls are sloping around them, only fabric, with the sun soaking through. They’re so alone out there. They can go days without seeing another soul.

The work doesn’t stop when they go out camping. There are still things they’re trying to reach. It’s more a way of life than a 9-to-5. Just him and Zuck out camping, or all of them in the village, they’re living in a different world.

The closest town to them is Ely. Someone goes in every month or so. At first Charlie always wanted to be one of the people going into town. He wanted to see other humans, take half an hour to go to the cafe and sit surrounded by strangers. Now he doesn’t care so much. Ely isn’t much of a town, especially in the off season, when all the tourist shops are closed down. It can still be nice to have some direct say in what groceries come back with them, but it isn’t necessarily worth giving up a whole day to another idea of civilization, not when what they have out at the village is good enough.

On long winter nights they gather around the television to watch old movies. Living out here is intentionally isolating, that’s part of the project design, but it’s been determined that they can watch the local news. It comes in staticky, crackling around the edges, disappearing entirely in bad storms. They watch the weather report, and hear about high school sports. Their organization is the most interesting thing around locally, and they don’t make the news. It isn’t allowed.

Jason is enamored with the lead anchor on the five o’clock broadcast. She’s blonde, and beautiful, and laughs kindly at the weatherman’s puns. 

“I’m going to marry her someday,” he says, and Charlie says, “Sure you will,” unsure what he wants to believe. He likes the idea of there being somewhere beyond this — that someday Jason will have a beautiful wife, a daughter, a normal life. He wants that for both of them, the picturesque. He just isn’t sure if he could still fit into that life after everything that’s happened. And a small voice he tries to ignore says he’d rather keep Jason all to himself. 

The whisper stops when it gets truly late, and Jason is lying next to him in bed, too cold to sleep on their own. Charlie stays up worrying about all the work they have ahead of them, listening to Jason breathe. He wonders which of the league’s thirty hands is trying to understand dreams. It’s something they dabble in here, but it isn’t their direct responsibility. There must be people out there devoted to that and nothing else. 

It’s honestly amazing that their program hasn’t made them try to reach out psychically while they’re unconscious. If Charlie brought it up, he’s sure Mikko would figure something out, which is why he keeps it to himself. It’s enough for the work to take up all their waking hours.

There's the great nonstoppedness to what they do. It never pauses, they're always on, always on call. They are never apart, always breathing the same air, too close for any sort of perspective or reason. 

It's natural that things like this happen. They're living in each other's pockets in a forest of oddities, with only each other as refuge from the strange. It's natural that they drift as close as they do, natural that the borders dissolve as if they were never there. It's natural to become everything to each other instead of just good friends. 

For now at least, in the forest, always a minute away from duty or danger calling. Sex comes easy to them. They know each other, they know how to communicate, they know how to work together to get satisfaction. Sex comes very easy to them. For now at least, removed as they are from the real world. 

This is not the life Charlie imagined for himself. Not in the slightest. Every aspect of his life is inconceivable in many ways. Zuck may be the thing that makes the best sense. Zuck is his best friend. If they were living an ordinary life, outside of the woods, Zuck could still be his best friend. Charlie doesn’t know how they would have met each other, but he feels confident that if they crossed paths, they would wind up like this. They fit together.


End file.
